Base

Regarding Base transaction fees: they are high because the chain is at its target capacity (2x the throughput of the L1), but demand has increased dramatically. Data fees remain insignificant thanks to EIP-4844 blobs which are still far from capacity!  So while "it could be worse..." what can make it better? (cont)

Eng @ Coinbase, working on Base
https://bayardo.org

Simplest thing would be to just increase the chain's target capacity. I'm pretty confident we could just 2X it right now and the Base sequencer + most node infra would handle it just fine. But "pretty confident" isn't good enough. And it's not just the short term we need to be concerned about. (cont)

That said, we will be evaluating bumping up the target conservatively in the near term if we reach confidence this can be done safely from an infrastructure perspective, and we conclude it keeps us aligned with the longer term solutions to state growth. (cont)

On the bright side, overall L2 capacity is well below target (based on the fact that blobs are under-utilized). So Ethereum *as a whole* will continue scaling by traffic growth on other underutilized L2 rollups and/or new L2s coming online. Chain interop remains a UX sore point, but solutions to this are also underway.

Oh, and as for whether this is a new normal or a temporary spike in fees, it's tough to say. My guess is there's a temporary frenzy going on and fees could drop precipitously in the coming days, but the longer term trend in demand will continue to be up and to the right, so gotta get scaling anyway!

Longer term, increasing throughput leads to faster rate of state growth. While Ethereum roadmap has some cool ideas for dealing with state growth, they are not going to be ready in the short term. We need to keep overall growth aligned with the timeline for these sorts of features. (cont)

What would break if you increased it ~4x to match what Polygon is providing? 8m gas/s

Probably, but all depends on the hardware. We're not sure what kinds of hardware setups RPC providers and such are using for example. We need to benchmark against specific hardware recommendations that we then pass on to partners before getting too crazy.

Nice thread! What’s the main risk with bumping up the gas limit? Looks like Base can do 6x Ethereum’s gas throughput. Aren’t eth node requirements conservative enough that Base could make large increases in gas limit without worry?